FareAlerts: Find Mistake Fares Powered by AI (2022)
Error fares (or mistake fares) are the dream of every aviation geek and nomadic traveler. Most often, you can get huge discounts on ticket prices, and airlines most likely have to honor them. Over the years, I had the chance to score a couple of them, including a mistake fare of $140 USD round trip from Stockholm to Hawaii (in Economy Class with American Airlines) and a €589 round trip in business class with Alitalia, from Budapest to Buenos Aires.
There are a few ways to follow error fares, primarily Twitter feeds and RSS feeds. However, I recently stumbled upon FareAlers.
What is FareAlerts?
FareAlerts.co is an online service that offers hand-curated and special mistake fares (error fares). FareAlerts is also powered by AI. You can create an account, select your preferred airports, and get notified every week about different error fare flights to several destinations.
The cost of the service is $49 USD per year, and the premium plan offers:
- Add up to 10 Departure Airports
- Between 10-15 Deals Per week
- Domestic & International Airports
- Get the best alerts by your preferred “Regions, Preferred Months, and Trip Duration”
- Hand Curated & Special Mistake FareAlerts
- Unsubscribe anytime (no strings attached)
- 30 Days Money Back Guarantee
I tried creating a “free” account on FareAlerts.co. It prompts with some settings that you can configure for the alerts, such as what is your nearest airport, your favorite airports, how soon you are planning to travel, how long your trip should be, and what is your favorite region.
My guess is that with these options, they filter down the search space so that they can focus on your selection rather than notifying you of offers you wouldn’t like
However, after you set up these options, it goes straight to the checkout page. It doesn’t really let you do anything with a “free” account.
FareAlerts.co: AI-powered mistake fares?
When it comes to the AI-powered part, they don’t give any details. It would be interesting to know what kind of models they use, how do they train them, and how do the options and account settings impact the search results and the use of their models.
Regardless, I think it is a great initiative and I’m looking forward to trying out the service. I’m planning on doing a full review later, explaining how it compares to other apps or services like Hopper.
It would also be great if they offered some kind of free tier, even if it is for receiving just 1 offer per week.
Wrap up
I love these initiatives and whatever technology comes up to help us identify better (or more spontaneous) travel options.
I’ll follow up soon with more details and an in-depth review. If you give it a shot, let me know your experience in the comments or via Instagram.
Until next time!
